Game Informer: downgrading MW2 is a good thing, and dissenters are nerds

[Jereel Hunter]

shio said:

You really know nothing of PC gaming, your post is so oblivious to the characteristics of PC games that I don't know where to begin.

First, the legs shown by Starcraft ARE common to PC games! If the game is great, then there's 99% probability that it will have the hundred-mile long legs of Starcraft. I showed you a recent example in Sins of a Solar Empire that is showing such legs, but there are countless examples.
If the game isn't great and just good/decent, it will still have legs of a PC game, which are LONGER than any console in existence!!
If the game is terrible, it might still have some legs, but probably not.

The thing is, you don't know crap about PC games and how their sales behave. Console games usually sell almost all copies in the first month and that's it, with few exceptions. On PC it's the other way around, since PC games keep selling for 5, 10, 15 years and more, and this is more true than ever because of Digital Distribution. Imagine now, with DD, where every PC game will never run out of shelf space.

The first month of sales of a PC game is probably less than 15% of the total lifetime sales, in most cases. This is what you need to get into your mind.

I still don't know why you even bring up piracy. Sure, PC devs would've been better without piracy, but PC games are selling better than ever, and there are more PC games being developed than ever.

Xelloss said:

 Jereel, seriously though. Piracy has always been a problem. You have zero proof or even fundamental data required to make your assertation that PC sales have declined because of piracy. What really happened, is consoles just became BIGGER than PC gaming. Due to the "stable" platform, it also became more focused, and due to the vested interests of the platform makers - giantts of industry all, much more heavily marketed.

 There are way to many tangents here for me to address them all individually but, I will cherry pick one :
 ""This statement can only be considered deeply subjective, or downright false. Early gaming consoles are why we have PC games today.This is a false statement, in the extreme and shows how little you know of the early days and evolution of gaming. Not trying to be insulting, but it is the plain truth. Early PC gaming is why we have consoles, not the other way around.

Although you've risen some reasonable points with the rest of your post, I'm only focusing on the part above. First, PC gaming was never bigger than consoles gaming. Why? Console gaming existed before PC gaming. PC games only stared coming around when the second generation of consoles were starting to be released. Better yet, In the second generation, consoles were already selling dozens of millions of consoles, while PC were only selling by the thousands.

Only 48 thousand PCs were sold in 1977. How many millions did consoles sell in 1977!?

Jereel Hunter said:

Well, PC sales have declined for multiple reasons - during the golden age of PC gaming, piracy stole lots of sales, but it was ok, there were plenty of sales to be had. Declining sales are for many reasons (increased piracy is one - you can get a pirated games nowadays, from home, in virtually no time at all - using cracked versions in BBS days was often a hassle, and copying a game from friends didn't always work back when games required verification from manuals and such... piracy was always a problem, but not always as easy as it is today)  but the fact that sales have declined for various reasons means that lost sales from piracy are more of an issue. Perhaps piracy is the same as always, but that just means that it's up, relative to sales.

 

My statement about consoles being the reason we have PC gaming was a general one - my reference is to is becoming a mass market business. PC games may have existed first, but they weren't a big business. Consoles brought the gaming to families and opened up a larger market.

 

As for calling PCs a more expensive peice of equipment - they are no doubt capable of much more thna consoles, however a $200-$300 PC is not going to deliver the gaming experience of a 360 or a PS3, and while some people have their PCs hooked into their HDTVs, it's only common among... PC gamers. A very very small % of people have that setup at home. Most people only have a large HDTV in their living room, whereas their PC is likely in their bedroom or office. And yes, you have the option, if you're a gamer, to have a nice TV in your bedroom/office - but it's something that's not economically viable for many.

My point was primarily that calling PC gaming "better", and to go so far as to say gaming in general would be better without console games is crazy. There's so much that consoles offer that PC gaming generally avoids. I myself am primarily a PC gamer - always have been, but I enjoy console games as both a change of pace, and for certain types of games. I hands-down prefer my PC over any console, but even someone as opinionated as myself wouldn't flat out say it's better.

It's like you've been frozen for 20 years. PC GAMING NEVER DECLINED!!!! Infact, this is the best time ever for PC gamers and PC games.

And Console games existed BEFORE PC games.

And PCs are cheaper than ever, and PC games are cheaper than ever. Infact, I believe that PC gaming is cheaper than Console gaming. Just this week you could've bought:
On Steam:
$5 Stalker
$15 The Witcher
$2.50 Team Fortress 2
$24 Call of Duty 4
And a bunch of other sales

On Direct2Drive:
$5 Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines
$20 Dead Space
$10 Ghostbusters
And a bunch of other sales

On Gamersgate:
$19 Street Fighter IV
$3.50 Gothic 2
And a bunch of other sales

On Impulse:
$24 COD4 (16,70 €)
$15 The Witcher (13,91 €)
And a bunch of other sales

This only took me a few minutes of my time.

And you can't dismiss the fact that PC has the ability to be connected on HDTVs just because not many people do it. Hell, most consoles aren't even connected to HDTVs!

 

Legs in PC games are long, but the legs shown by SC are NOT common, it's popularity and success are far from standard. And yes, DD bodes well for the future of PC sales, however it hasn't been around that long, all told.

PC gaming may not be on a visible decline from the viewpoint of PLAYERS, but the profits enjoyed by developers and publishers is down, as well as numerous developers shifting resources to consoles, developing with a console first mentality, or PC focussed developers shutting down. If you don't see that, I may not be the one who has been "frozen for 20 years."

If you look at the total market, the $ amounts may even hold up, but look at where that money is going - such a large $ of the PC market is tied up in a few MMORPGs with subbscriptions, it's easy to miss the numbers of other games falling by the wayside.

I feel like you're just looking for reasons to argue here - I'm not dismissing the PC's ability to connect to HD TVs, my only point being that most people aren't set up to do it, and need to make an additional purchase in order to have a big TV on their PC as well as in their living room. I was only saying that some people like playing on consoles because they are different, and these differences include playing on the big TV in your living room over what is, in all likeliness, a smaller TV/monitor in your bedroom/office. As for the prices of games themselves, consoles and computers have a massive variety of older titles available for bargains - second-hand games at gamestop or Arcade/PSN titles are available plenty cheap. The issue is for $300, you can have a full system and you never have to worry about specs... if you by a $300 system, it's probably not going to be so great for gaming. I'M NOT SAYING that makes consoles better, I buy a new PC(and not a $300 one) every other year to keep up with things, and PC gaming is my focus. But I think it's unfair to say that consoles have actually made gaming worse.